I write about food and start culinary projects just short of restaurants.

The Art of Kaiseki at Nanzan Giro Giro

Kaiseki is a formal, almost ceremonial, Japanese cuisine devoted to a series of small courses. It’s as much about taste as it is the textures, the colors of the food, the vessel it’s served in and the seasons reflected in each menu. If you talk to chef Yoshihiro Matsumoto of Nanzan Giro Giro, the new kaiseki-only restaurant in Honolulu, you’ll realize that for him, kaiseki is a deeply personal affair. “Kaiseki is relationship of restaurant and customers,” he says in broken English. “Customers trust a restaurant, no need menu…And I must take to them Japanese kaiseki restaurant’s soul.”